CULTURE AND “ETIKET”
Wan thing oim after noticin’ lately is a great tindency on the part of some folks who pertend to what they call culchure, to throw into their conversation the worrd “gotten”—an ungainly worrd that has been out of date since the time when yer grandfather swore “odsbodkins” an’ the like, until some fad hunter dug it up. Oi mind a friend of mine sint a note to his wife sayin’ “I have gotten tickets fer Melba to-night.” He wasn’t a very good writer, an’ his wife thought he meant he had got ten tickets, and begob she invited the whole neighborhood and it nearly broke him makin’ good.
Now culchure is a quare thing; an uncommon thing; a thing that’s hard to define and harder to get. ’Tis not in usin’ this worrd “gotten” or any other perticular worrd; ’tis not in usin’ the long “a” in “bath” or pronouncin’ “calf” as if it was “koff”; nor is it in callin’ a counter jumper or a lad in the Civil Service a “clark” instid of a “clerk.” Not a whit. All these things may be signs of culchure, an’ they may not—mostly not. They are a lot of people who niver had nawthin’ but a rude eddication, (that’s whoy it’s called a “rudimentary eddication”), an’ never larned anything since they wint to school; but who, be hook or be crook, (mostly crook), an’ a few dollars, or inflooence, or by marryin’ into dollars and inflooence, have gotten onto the skirts of what they call sassiety; an’ begob these people I’m tellin’ ye about they think that culchure is in the usin’ of perticular worrds or in perticular pernounce-i-ation. It niver enters their nuts that culchure is shown by the thots ye express an’ the depth of knowledge ye show of men an’ things, an’ not by little peculiarities of pro-nounce-i-ation which a man may inherit from his grandfather, or have caughten from a locality in his youth—de ye follow me?
Now “etiket” is the usages of culchured sassiety, an’ it’s fer that same etiket that I’ve been stearin’ all the while. Etiket an’ culchure is not the same thing among different people. ’Tis wan thing in wan place, an’ another in another place. Fer example, a gintleman in the Figi Islands wud think it no disgrace to ate his grandmother. ’Tis looked at different here, altho’ ye can skin yer brother-in-law, or never return borried money to yer father-in-law.
Now, I gev ye all this harrd earned wisdom that I cud worrk down to me frind Dundonald an’ his riferince to “Etiket.”—De ye ketch me pint? Me Earl lad is no judge of Etiket in Canada; he’s only a soldier anny way, an’ a soldier is no more a judge of etiket than a butcher is of plumbin’, or an Englishman is of a Canadian. Etiket, is it? Why, begob, I cud intrajuice the Dundonald into sassiety in Ottawa where he wud fall seven times over etiket before he opened his mouth wanst.
Etiket changes wid locality, as I told ye. The Earl only knowin’ wan kind, put his fut in it an’ showed his ignorance. Sure the most of us is por, wan-sided creatures. We look a fact in the face, an’ think we know all about it, never dreamin’ that it shud be turned over an’ examined on the back of it, not to mintchin’ the several sides of it.
